


Erlösung

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-24 04:45:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17094161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Gellert aids a lost soul, much to his lifelong lover's dismay.A study of love and ageing.





	Erlösung

**Author's Note:**

  * For [archdemonblood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/archdemonblood/gifts).



> This ended up being quite... experimental? 
> 
> Each section is a snapshot sub-headed (the first seven are the seven deadly sins; the last, redemption). It's meant to be intimate and vague.
> 
> PROMPT selected: 
> 
> 2) Threesome with any submissive male character except for Newt.

**i. hochmut**

“And you think he is worthy?”

Gellert paused. The summit grass bowed gently with the breeze. From this vantage, overlooking the valley, the boy was within sight: prostrate, hands outstretched. His black velveteen robes draped over the scorched moss and gave him the look of small black mound; reminiscent of the bosky knolls fading endlessly into their beige horizon. He too had been crafted by collision—the gradual grind of pain, unrelenting, formed steep slopes, treacherous rivers.

Finally, Gellert said: “Yes. But I was skeptical, too. At first.”

“I see.” Albus—tall marvellous Albus, a man with quicksilver wit, a man who perhaps had never doubted another’s redemption before—sounded unconvinced. This offered Gellert some amusement. Albus continued: “I must wonder what changed your mind.”

“Mein Schatz, you are unpredictable.” Gellert’s pale smile was sharp; keen. “You have forgiven so many wicked men, so many times before. Now you look upon a boy as if he’s the exception.”

“I do not believe an exception exists,” Albus claimed, dishonestly. “And, if one does, I am a most unqualified magistrate.”

Casually, but with a flair of importance, Gellert unsheathed his wand and brandished it around his head. Flecks of glittering light swirled then, by his command, gathered in the fore and formed a picture: a face they both knew. Boyish and scowling with a peculiar jagged cut in the centre of his forehead. Albus stepped back, awed.

“Yes,” Gellert confirmed. He rose his wand and the face twinkled into oblivion. “He allowed me in his mind, where I expected to find little of value, and then, like a needle, this. Quite a persuasive discovery. Wouldn’t you say, mein Schatz?”

Albus lowered his head. The amber hair fell over his long charming face. Gellert was reminded of hoary timeworn images. The picture of a young man stooped over his desk, too caught up to tie back the loose strands. Rather than parchment, however, he was staring into the pit of the earth, the crest of the valley; at the broken boy poised for redemption.

They were getting old, weren’t they?

 

*

 

**ii. geiz**

Gellert Grindelwald was the only known wizard, living or dead, to have successfully reversed the rending of his soul.

He had not followed Tom Riddle’s path, no. Gellert was not interested in Horcruxes; he did not want to live forever and thought the fantasy both droll and juvenile. His journey began in pursuit of knowledge. Not only the magical, were magical. All of life was wound in enchantments. The fabric of science, the make of lore, the warm thrill in the loins of a lover; this was a magic, a powerful magic, something most wizards could scarcely begin to understand in their clinical unseeing divisions of Muggle and Magic.

And though he risked himself to learn through interminable pain, though he pushed himself further than any wizard had ever before, in pursuit of understanding this, it was not Grindelwald who stumbled upon this insight, first.

It was Albus Dumbledore.

Tom knew of him, vaguely. He’d attended Hogwarts, like Tom had, and held unbeaten records across the disciplines. If Tom had applied himself to the woes of academe then perhaps he could have surpassed Dumbledore’s scores, at least in his better subjects. But he did not care for such trivialities. He was a very, very good student, and remarkably talented, no doubt. In those tender years, however, he’d set his sights on grander ambitions than bureaucracy and the acclaim of unexceptional wizards. It had been his ambition to transcend this plane as Grindelwald had.

“But,” said Grindelwald. His wand was aimed at Tom’s temple. “But you did not seek the ephemeral, did you? I must say, kleiner Mann, even I was not bold enough to doubt my mortality. That was an especially stupid error of yours, I think.”

This was their fourth meeting. Tom stood with straight posture, an assured bearing. The study was a high-vaulted den several miles underground with an enchanted roof that mimicked the skies; slate grey skies like back home. Imbedded in the walls were shelves densely packed with texts, scrolls, curious trinkets in clusters. How Tom longed to own this, for himself. The need: he tried to suffocate it. Yet each glimmer of that black opal jewel, each quiver of the golden quill, stirred an ache in his chest; a deep, deep hunger to have; to be a man who can have.

“You have called me kleiner Mann now thrice,” Tom said. “This is reserved for children, correct? I am twenty-one.”

“So you are,” Grindelwald said chirpily. He had a manner of speaking which was both condescending and eerie; Tom did not care for it. “And still, kleiner Mann, you have much more to learn. I have riddled you thus far with tasks which you no doubt found banal and pointless. I suspect you are now wondering why I’ve bothered to take you in, if all you are to do is sit around on your knees and pluck brown granules from white sugar bowls. Am I correct?”

“No, sir.” In this, Tom seemed sincere. As sincere as he could be, anyway. “I respect your methods.”

“Then sit.” Grindelwald gestured at the saddle stool. “Listen.”

 

*

 

**iii. zorn**

The oak panelling in the master suite matched little else in the Feigenbaum Estate. Upon his inheritance, as last of his mother’s line, Gellert renovated precious little. The magic was old; pulsating. He felt the heartbeat in its veins, the corridors, ran his fingers over the gallery furniture and sparked with energy. The bedroom of his mother—for whatever magic it did have—did not taste sweet, as did the rest of the manor. Her gloom was palpable even in death.

Methodically, Gellert abraded her sordid memory. He replaced her tastes with Albus’s: ruddy browns and deep-toned accents, adorning Elizabethan detail, carved floral patterns down the columns of the four-poster bed. Stylistically eclectic, unapologetically pompous. And, like Albus, indelibly poncy.

One reminder of mother remained. Her hairbrush: silver, boar bristled, an insignia on the back. One small triangle; one small circle; one line through the center. How her blood had filled his head with lies. She had lived a pampered but empty life; a state of being only the wealthy could mourn. With its excesses and expectations, her endowed childhood filled her pretty blonde head with beliefs that were untrue: that she was entitled caring friends, that her husband would crave her alone.

Gellert curled his fingers around the handle and lifted it from the boudoir. Heavy for its size. He wrenched it, reared back his arm, and struck down against his outstretched hand.

 

*

 

**iv. völlerei**

_Grime caking the stubbed, scabbed skin of small nail-beds; a whistle of a kettle and the taste, the bitter taste, the industrial black brew, sugarless; the horseshoes scuttling echoing thumps on the cobblestone, and high-pitched chatter, always chatter this time to day._

"An orphanage. It was no happy place to grow up, was it?"

Gingerly, Gellert receded from his mind. Their feet were deep in the slop of the quarry. Rainwaters, runoff from the rivulets. Tom lifted each of his feet from the sewage, one at a time, letting the heavy slosh drain off before returning his waterlogged boot back into the brackish filth.

"I will enter again."

Tom squeezed shut his eyes and nodded.

 

*

 

**v. wollust**

“You told him that old story?”

Along the porcelain, Albus slid further in the water. His long languid arms draped around the pouted lip of the basin. Gellert gathered his fingers around the rough threading of his towel and unclothed himself, neither erotically nor teasingly. Their naked bodies—his own still muscled, Albus’s still caved and lean—were casual sight to each other, and demanded thrill: the curse of old lovers.

Neither yet appeared frail or wispy, their skin was not yet wrinkled, beyond the necessary lines of wear.

"Is it such an old story?"

Their first trip to Erfurt. A romantic waltz, a walk through the _Altstadt_. Untouched, then and now, by the harassments of war. Tom had not seem especially delighted by Gellert's meandering and aimless retelling of the day, but he was a patient boy, a good listener.

Gellert broke the water's surface, opposite Albus. Their ankles grazed together in the warm, lathery waters. He snapped his fingers and the candles dimmed.

"Ariana loves the story. I thought perhaps he might too."

Albus looked off, over his shoulder, to nothing at all. "Ariana is an innocent."

"It is unlike you to be jealous, mein Schatz."

"I am not jealous. I am simply...hesitant...to assume that even you, of all people, can mend what little is left of him."

"You can help, if you'd like," said Gellert suggestively. He reached forward the bathwater and traced soft circles along Albus's calf. "I am his only hope, you see."

With a long-suffering, hoarse, jaded sigh, Albus sunk into Gellert's touch. "You tore your soul to see further than man has ever dared; he slaughtered his own blood when he was but a pup. I do believe he shared your vision, Gellert. That does not mean he shall share your fate."

"Perhaps," Gellert granted. "But you have not seen what I have."

 

*

 

**vi. neid**

Gellert was sipping mead from his gauntlet when came the knock. He smiled, waved his hand. The arched door of the master suite opened along its center split, and through the gap, Tom entered with a suspicious glance over the space. Albus—reading on the bergère, wearing silk bath robes—nodded once. “How do you do?” he asked.

“I’m well,” Tom said slowly, his eyes still roving. “It’s a very lovely room you have.”

“I am glad you think as much.” Gellert swilled his mead, absent-mindedly. His eyes were on young Tom.

He was English in every shade: a long, soft-tipped nose, high flat cheeks, a stern brown. Skin so translucent, it flared red in moments of stress or tense emotion. With his soot-black loose curls, styled well to his face, Tom was classically handsome, good-looking by any standard, and when he smiled, falsely nervous and grand, Gellert found him uniquely gorgeous. But now he was not smiling; he was flushed, stoic, discerning. He sensed danger.

If so, then very well. In that vile childhood of his, he must have learned at some point that prettiness was a rare but mighty vulnerability. Gellert may have let the thought deter him from advancing, if Tom’s power was not so raw and throbbing. He was no one’s victim; his magic would not allow it.

And to Gellert’s immense pleasure, he was curious. Guarded, yes, but his eyes moved a slow line down Gellert’s front. Glinting in the dark-eyed stare was appetite.

“Would you like a drink?” Gellert offered his gauntlet. “I made it myself.”

“I know what you’ve called me for,” Tom said bluntly; he would always be a tactless gritter at heart, and no amount of civilizing could quite scourge it out of him.

Gellert gave an indifferent shrug and sipped again. “Well, I did not think you were an idiot. Come,” he rubbed the duvet at his side. “Sit.”

The transparent thing that he was, Tom hesitated. Scowled on the offence. Then, with a stiff breath, he obliged Gellert’s command and eased into the bed—backwards, leaning; not quite sitting.

“You are a man of many perversions, Mr. Riddle,” Gellert started simply as he broke through Tom’s first defence: touch. Slowly, slowly, Gellert rested his hand on the soft crook of his neck, where the robe collar ended. Tom flinched reflexively but did not cower back; he was allowing this. He wanted this. With the tips of his fingers, Gellert slid beneath the cotton and roamed with a delicate tenderness. “I do not see why you deprive yourself lust.”

"I do not—"

Before Tom could speak, Gellert raised the gauntlet rim and pressed it to his full bottom lip. “Drink.”

His eyes turned to Gellert’s. Burning around the edge of his irises was thin red trim. He obediently tilted back his head. Gellert poured the mead slowly so that he could drink and then—ever so slightly—tipped too steep. Tom gulped once, uneasily, then spluttered the maroon liquid over his front, spritzing Gellert with stray drops. Wide eyes looked betrayed at Gellert.

“I do not deprive myself,” Tom retorted petulantly as he wiped his mouth at his sleeve.

“Then with whom have you shared yourself?”

“Women.”

Gellert had to chuckle. He left the cup to float mid-air and occupied both hands with Tom. One at the taut bare small of his back, the other at his cheek. His knuckles carefully traced the smooth planes of his face. Barely above a whisper, he said in a breathe above Tom’s ear: “You are a liar, Mr. Riddle You’ve never touched a woman.”

Patches of red warmed the apples of his cheeks. He closed his eyes and seemed to drift inwardly, along the foam, to the sensual world within. The slight crease in his brow belied angst.

"You have never been touched," Gellert told him frankly. This shifted the crease, and it became a furrow. "Never truly touched by someone who cared. This is where the rift begins," Gellert said, his hand having roved to the base of Tom's spine, "it began with birth. Soul-splitting is a curious art. I have found, without exception, that all who rend their essence, were fractured long before their descent into madness."

In the reflection of the grand gilded mirror, Gellert watched his fingers spread over Tom's gown, parting the thread a the neck then lowering, button-by-button, to the base. His wan flesh bloomed with violent swathes of red. Chest and stomach were scarce of hair, but at the navel, traveling down, a thicket of black hair. His cock rose high and eager; a dribble of come leaking fresh from the tip. Hot desire curled deep in Gellert's pit, for he was not ignorant of Albus's attentive gaze, but instead emboldened by its leering, its craving. He relished the pale blue scrutiny as he arranged the boy's limbs to his liking—his arms at his sides, his legs bent at the knee. Gellert summoned his wand and brandished once, softly.

The spell burgeoned visibly in Tom's writhing and half-choked exhalation. Muscles, young muscles, sinewy and soft, contracted in and expanded. Gellert's cock twitched. He turned to Albus and smiled.

"Come join, mein Schatz."

Albus looked skeptically over the top of his scroll. "I am not his master; you are."

"Du schlawiner. I know you miss this." With palm, he cupped the head of Tom's cock and gently gripped. His breath was sweet; inexperienced. "We’ve brought younger men into our chamber before."

Tom parted his lip and sighed. “Then I’m in good hands.”

There was a distant call, a bird’s song, fading in the winds of the night but powerful, still, and somehow foreboding. Albus joined them at the bed and rid his body of clothes. Older, older, but the same beauty Gellert knew first was there, apparent: sharp lines, a thick lead of hair down his navel from which his hard cock sprung youthful. Gellert took his in one hand, then Tom’s in his mouth. Between his own legs, a stiff and impatient force throbbed venomously; he would need to tend it soon. He stroked Albus slowly; mouthed Tom fiercely.

Three strained breaths—Tom’s final attempts at holding back his need for expression. He spilled hot and fast in Gellert’s mouth. The bitter taste, he swallowed down expertly.

“You like the feeling,” said Gellert lowly. Tom watched him with a red face. For all his stoicism and sham charm, he was, in this moment, something resembling human. “We all like to be touched. Before you can hope to feel on behalf of those you’ve _hurt_ , you must know, first, how it feels to hurt. And hurting—in the truest sense—begins with knowing what it means to feel good.”

 

*

 

**vii. faulheit**

That night, Gellert returned to the quarry alone. Duckweed clumped furry atop the surface. He skimmed his fingers there, a glide along the top, and gathered the debris into sodden clumps. He supposed, foolishly, as he had many times before, that the ancient voices would whisper again to him here, as they had before. He thought of the boy with the cut on his head; of the serpentine figure; of his very last breath, as he'd foreseen it, here, in these waters.

Mother told him long ago, in her rolling, curling Swabian tongue, how their ancestors gathered in these mounts to heed the wisdom of the gods. But were there really gods, he wondered. And if there were, what did it all mean that he should be whole again, and the boy split and splintered—irreparably, it seemed.

"He has left."

"Has he?" Gellert looked to the eclipsed form of Albus, staring down at him from the marble rock edge. His edges were a luminescent golden hue.

"Not all souls can be saved. Nor can all young men grow to be old."

"But we have."

"Yes. We have."

 

*

 

**viii. erlösung**

Gellert lowered Albus beside the hearth. He was smiling, chuckling, watching each move of Gellert’s hand as he slipped off the knot of his belt and the tore down the drawstring pants. His cock was half-limp, but growing stronger, Gellert rounding his mouth on the tip, and gently, gently going down. A sharp gasp, and Albus grabbed him. His hands clenched Gellert’s hair and directed his pace. The sensation was warm; wet; it felt like home.

When Gellert split himself, he saw into the distance a life of meager victory and of himself, falling into the abyss. There was that boy, that boy with the scar. He seemed to know nothing and everything all at once. All Gellert knew then, was what he knew today.

“I love you,” he said into Albus’s neck. And through his shudders, Albus muttered an affirmative, though the words were meaningless between lovers so true.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was so delighted when you suggested using Tom Riddle (I'm a complete stan). I hope you like it! 
> 
> And the rest of you, too. <3 Merry Christmas!


End file.
